We visited our son and his better half in their home near Castlegar, located in the West Kootenays of British Columbia, a couple of weeks ago. Our daughter and her boyfriend were able to come along with us too. It was the first time that we were all together in a couple of years. This, of course, gave the opportunity to do a bit of family caching.

We had gone Geocaching with our son and his girlfriend several times but our daughter and her boyfriend had never been caching before. We wanted their first caching experience to be positive as well as allow our son to have some fun so the plan was that we would do a couple of caches that mrs_go and I had already been to. This way if the snow was too deep we would know it was a waste of time looking or we would be able to ‘help’ them a bit. Then once they had a few caches ‘under their belt’ we would continue on to some that none of us found.

Our first stop was near the Brilliant Dam just North of town. This spot is a nice little rest area on the banks of the Kootenay River. It offers washroom facilities, a picnic table or two, a short trail and lots of great views of the river:

We were lucky enough on this day to see a couple of deer running on the tracks below, likely startled by our exuberance:

From there we headed back into town to Twin Rivers Park. This is just one of the many parks in Castlegar and is home to the beautiful Millennium Walkway.

The Millennium Walkway is on the shoreline of the Columbia River and meanders through forested areas. We were here in early June when we stopped in for a couple of days on our way back from GeoWoodstock. I guess we missed posting about it, likely because of all the catching up we had to do once we got home!

We saw quite a few small birds on the river that we believe to be Barrow’s Goldeneye (if not please let us know what they are…):

The ‘kids’ found two caches here in the park area. One was an easy find just off the trail. The other was much farther off the trail and required tramping through the snow, sinking almost to our knees at times.

Once we arrived back on the trail they decided that they had had enough. Their hands and ears were cold and their feet were wet. Mrs_go and I, bundled in our tuques, scarves, mittens and winter boots could only nod in agreement as we eyed their uncovered ears, exposed fingers and sneakers. Kids!

We went back to our son’s place and made cinnamon biscuits and hot chocolate as they logged their finds.

Had I known that there would be sweet treats like this after an afternoon of winter caching I know I would have been more keen to go out at home this winter! LOL!

We had a wonderful time caching with our kids and although we never found any ‘new’ caches it felt great to be back – back together and back caching!

Keep on caching!

This post was originally posted on our now defunct website, Geocaching Online

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